Winners! Challenge #150 and Birthday Bonanza Prize Drawings

Wow!  We had a fabulous turnout for our Birthday Bonanza challenge!  The Design Team loved seeing the entries created for it.  We are so appreciative of all of you... after all, without the support of our challenge participants, our blog would not have reached the milestones of 3 years and 150 challenges!

A lot of you got into the Christmas spirit with this challenge, as evidenced by the cards chosen by the Design Team as our Weekly Winners!  Please join me in congratulating them, listed here in order of entry into the challenge:

#3 - Lindsey

#9 - Sazzle Dazzle Crafts

#11 - Deepti

#14 - Dana

#19 - Maria

Super job, ladies! We hope that you'll be proud to copy our winners' badge and display it on your blog:

And now...  (imagine a drum roll)...  Our Birthday Bonanza prizes go to the following lucky ladies:

£15 eGift Certificate to Uniko:  Di Ayers

$25 USD/£15 Gift Certificate to Crafter's Companion:   Cimbacreativefun

Set of 12 Spectrum Noir Aqua Markers:  Maaike

Congratulations!  Be on the lookout for an email from Patricia with regard to your prize.

Thank you to our generous sponsors!  And thanks again to all of our challenge participants.  Here's to the next 150 challenges!  :)

If you haven't played along with us yet this week, there is still time to join in our current challenge and design team call: #151 - Colours. You have until 11:00 p.m. London U.K. time /6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time Wednesday, November 25, 2015 to link your card to the challenge post. We'd love to have you join us!

Design Team Call and Challenge #151 - Colours

We are looking for a few new members to add to our Design Team in 2016!  

We are dedicated to creating cards in the Clean and Simple style, alternating between colour challenges and sketch challenges.  If you would like to be considered for a position on our team, you will need to participate in this week's colour challenge and next week's sketch challenge so that we can see your work in both types of challenges.  Please add the letters "DT" after your name when you link your cards for the two challenges, and make sure that your cards follow our Challenge Rules.  Applicants will be contacted during the month of December, and our new members will start on the team in January.

Well, we are half way through November and I guess everyone's thoughts must be turning towards Christmas and winter. Louise here again with my second colour challenge. By the way, thank you to everyone who played along with the sketch challenge for our 150th challenge last week, check back on Monday to find out if you were one of our winners!

This time I've chosen a not too traditional Winter colour palette, I think it's the silver that makes me think of winter, but we're happy with whatever this colour trio inspires you to create on your card, just keep it clean and simple.

We've used Stampin' Up colour names for reference; however, you may use any companies' products for your cards as long as you match our colours as closely as possible. You may also use white, ivory, kraft, or black for your card base and layers, for image outlines, or for sentiments. However, in order to be considered for our weekly winners, you must not use any other colours.

Here is some inspiration from the design team to get your creative juices flowing:

Louise - card #1

Louise - card #2

Jane

Patricia

Stef

Guest Designer - Beverley

Our challenge requirements are listed in the Challenge Rules tab.  Please read them carefully before linking your card.  Happy crafting!

Challenge End Time:  6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time/11:00 p.m. London U.K. time Wednesday, November 25, 2015

An InLinkz Link-up

Weekly Winners - Colour Challenge #149

Thank you to everyone who participated in last week's colour challenge!  We loved seeing what everyone created!

The number of Weekly Winners named each week is determined by the number of participants we have in each challenge.  That's why some weeks we have more Weekly Winners than others.  Based on the number of entries in last week's challenge, the Design Team would normally pick three Weekly Winners.  However, our voting resulted in one clear-cut winner and then a tie between four other cards!  Wow!  In the spirit of giving, since it's our birthday celebration week, we're going to go ahead and name all five of these cards as our Weekly Winners. In order of entry into the challenge, we congratulate:

#2 - Christine Drogt

#4 - Liz Bailey

#7 - Cimbacreativefun

#8 - stempelfrida

#9 - Flo

Fantastic job, ladies! Please feel welcome to copy our winners' badge and display it on your blog:

If you haven't played along with us yet this week, there is still time to join in our Birthday Bonanza challenge: #150 - Sketch. You have until 11:00 p.m. London U.K. time /6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time Wednesday, November 18 to link your card to the challenge post. We'd love to have you join us!

Birthday Bonanza Challenge #150 - Sketch

Hello, Louise here again this week. Thank you for the lovely cards in the gallery last week. Visit us again at the start of next week to find out who our Weekly Winners are.

We have a celebration going on here!  This is our 150th challenge, and our blog will be three years old later this month!  So we are combining these milestones into one event this week!  Many of you have been playing along on and off for the whole time and we would like to thank you for your support. Others have just recently found us and we hope that all of you will continue to play along, designing our favourite style of cards.  By way of a thank you, we have some fantastic prizes to give away this week as you play along with our weekly sketch, as long as you follow a couple of simple rules for this week.

Feel free to flip or rotate the sketch when creating your card, or to manipulate the rectangular shape of the card into a square. The number is a feature of the sketch.  Although the sketch was drawn up with a "1", any number can be used in order for your card to be considered for our Weekly Winners voting.

As mentioned earlier, we do have prizes!  In honor of our third birthday, we are excited to have something to award to three lucky winners:  one e-gift certificate from Uniko worth £15, one e-gift certificate from Crafter's Companion worth $25 US/£15, and one set of 12 Aqua Markers from Spectrum Noir!  Thank you so much to these generous companies!   To be considered for the prize drawing you need to use the number 1, 5, or 0, or any combination of those numbers, on your card.

Here is some inspiration from the design team to get your creative juices flowing:

Louise

Jane

Patricia

Stef

Guest Designer - Beverley

As a bonus, some of the Design Team members from Uniko and Crafter's Companion are also joining in the fun of our challenge!  To see these honorary Guest Designers' cards, click below to visit the companys' blogs.  Links to the online stores are also provided.

Uniko

Uniko Blog

Crafter's Companion - U.S.

Crafter's Companion - U.K.

Crafter's Companion Blog

Spectrum Noir

We hope you'll join in our Birthday Bonanza celebration!  Our challenge requirements are listed in the Challenge Rules tab.  Please read them carefully before linking your card.  Happy crafting!

Challenge End Time: 6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time/11:00 p.m. London U.K. time Wednesday, November 18, 2015

An InLinkz Link-up

Weekly Winners: Double Challenge #148

Thank you to everyone who participated in last week's challenge!  We loved seeing how everyone interpreted both the sketch and the colour palette. The double always seems to pose more of a challenge to our players but after careful thought the Design Team has chosen the following cards as our Weekly Winners.  In order of entry into the challenge, we congratulate:

#01 Maaike

#02 Birgit

#06 Di

Well done, ladies, we loved the way you all interpreted the sketch as well as making great use of the colours! Please feel welcome to copy our winners' badge and display it on your blog:

If you haven't played along with us yet this week, there is still time to join in our current colour challenge #149. You have until 11:00 p.m. London U.K. time /6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time on Wednesday 11th November 2015 to link your card to the challenge post. We'd love to have you join us!

Challenge #149 - Colours

Hello everyone, Louise here and it's my turn to host the challenges through November. I'm starting off with a colour scheme that, for me, is Autumn into winter. The dark blackberry is Autumn whilst the warm mustard and chocolate chip reminds me of warming foods and snuggling up round an open fire, a bit like sipping hot soup, around the bonfire, watching the fireworks. If you live in the UK and are celebrating bonfire night, tonight or at the weekend, I hope it stays dry for you and that you have a safe time. I will be inside, cuddling my cats to keep them safe too.

We've used Stampin' Up colour names for reference; however, you may use any companies' products for your cards as long as you match our colours as closely as possible. You may also use white, ivory, kraft, or black for your card base and layers, for image outlines, or for sentiments. However, in order to be considered for our weekly winners, you must not use any other colours.

Here is some inspiration from the design team to get your creative juices flowing:

Louise

Jane

Patricia

Stef

The Design Team is pleased to introduce Beverley Brown as our Guest Designer for the month of November!  Her name was selected from among our Weekly Winners from the month of September.   Beverley's cards have been gracing our gallery for quite a while, and we think you'll enjoy seeing her artwork this month.  Here is what she's created with this week's colours:

Our challenge requirements are listed in the Challenge Rules tab.  Please read them carefully before linking your card.  Happy crafting!

Challenge End Time: 6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time/11:00 p.m. London U.K. time Wednesday, November 11, 2015

An InLinkz Link-up

Weekly Winners: Sketch Challenge #147

Thank you to everyone who participated in last week's challenge!  We loved seeing what everyone created with our triangles sketch! However, several entries did not stick to our challenge rules and so we were not able to consider them in choosing our weekly winners. Please make sure you read our rules that are posted in a separate tab HERE. In order of entry into the challenge, the Design Team has therefore chosen the following cards as our Weekly Winners...

#05 Mandy

#07 Biggi

#08 Beverley

#13 Esther

#15 Dana

#16 Stargroves

... and because we had a tied vote we've included an extra winner! Congratulations everyone, a great selection of fantastic cards! Please feel welcome to copy our winners' badge and display it on your blog:

If you haven't played along with us yet this week, there is still time to join in our current double colours and sketch challenge #148. You have until 11:00 p.m. London U.K. time /6:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time on Wednesday, 4th November 2015 to link your card to the challenge post. We'd love to have you join us and share in the fun!